Mr. Bieber obtained an O-1 nonimmigrant visa in order to temporarily remain in the United States. To qualify for an O-1 visa he just had to demonstrate distinction: a degree of skill and recognition substantially above that ordinarily encountered. Lucky for him, Randy Jackson was his adjudicator.

What do you do when the ruble is in free fall, and your panicky population is buying up consumer goods and foreign currency? If you are President Vladimir Putin, you get a facial, a manicure, a make-up artist and make a jingoistic video ahead of your Thursday press conference:

The soft power of America's open society has once again come to the rescue of its hard power misadventures, this time by coming clean on the post-9/11 practice of torture. As China and several other countries intensify their crackdown on the Internet and open expression in general, the U.S. offers a lesson: honest criticism fortifies the legitimacy of government, not weakens it, because it assures an avenue for self-correction.
In The WorldPost this week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who led the charge as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee that released the controversial torture report, writes that "torture goes against the very soul of our country." Howard Fineman reports why Sen. John McCain, a leading Republican and POW during the Vietnam War, also believes torture is a "stain" on America's national honor -- and ineffective to boot. (continued)

2014 was full of Hollywood stars behaving oddly (See Shia LaBeouf and Amanda Bynes) and loads of fake viral videos. But this year saw fabrication with dead-serious ripple effects as well. Here are the prevaricators who rose to the top of the LieSpotting list this year:

Are western sanctions over Russia's support of Eastern Ukraine separatists, the declining price of oil, and the sharp decline of the ruble causing significant enough pressure on the Russian economy to change Putin's stance on the Ukraine?

Read this book right away. Because it carries the echo of the creeping devastation. And because the author proves that there is, in the ruins, another way to live. Not anger, not nostalgia, but insurrection through style.

A Russian threat to Bosnia-Hercegovina could mean a rupture of delicate interreligious relations maintained in the country since Dayton. Bosnia is still divided between a "Republic of Serbs" and the "Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina," with the latter comprising Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats.

If the sharply contrasting views of students in Xian or Beijing and Hong Kong are any indication, Deng Xiaoping's ideal formulation of "one country, two systems" has morphed into another reality: one country, two dreams.
George Chen writes that President Xi Jinping's "Chinese Dream" competes with other narratives in today's China: the "get rich is glorious" story of Alibaba's Jack Ma and the democratic aspirations of the Hong Kong students.
In a conversation with students after a lecture in Beijing, Amitai Etzioni detected a surprisingly aggressive patriotism, and even anti-Americanism, in college students he spoke with. WorldPost Senior Editor Kathleen Miles found similar sentiments when she talked with other students in Beijing as well as Xian. In contrast, WorldPost China Correspondent Matt Sheehan observes that the student-led umbrella protests in Hong Kong have become a "defining generational moment," not unlike the burst of freedom against authority in the 1960s in the West, that will trouble Beijing for a long time to come. (continued)

When the darkness came on the night of December 4th, Islamist militants attacked the capital of Chechnya-Grozny. They seized a publishing house and later moved to an empty school. At least 10 policemen were killed, about 28 were injured during a long shootout.

We want the world to see that Ukraine's peaceful surrender of nuclear weapons has earned it access to conventional weapons when it truly needs them to defend its borders. The United States should inform Moscow that the flow of such equipment would stop once Russia fully implements its commitments.

Russia's new agreement to sell Nigeria arms to combat Boko Haram (BH) is evidence of its desire to expand its global geopolitical influence as well as enhance its reputation for being willing to step in where the West will not.